Sons And Daughters Of BBCMF Nanotechnology Company/IndustryResearch

[BOREALIS]

Nanowire manipulation could lead to hand-held supercomputers

2007-10-23 17:41:00

Researchers have been working on nanowires and microchips so tiny that they could be used to build supercomputers that could fit in the palm of your hand. Hopefully, the nanowires will eventually lead to small, powerful gadget such as hand-held PCs, mobile phones as powerful as laptops, and medical advances.

The group of engineers, with members from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland [profile], the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and the University of Rome in Italy, will have their results published in an upcoming issue of Science.

The researchers studied the behavioral properties of nanowires--which are more than 1,000 times thinner than a human hair--and investigated how the wires react and respond to exterior forces compared with conventional wires.

"What we found is when we made these wires smaller and smaller they started to behave in a very funny way," researcher Michael Zaiser told the BBC News.


http://www.nanotechnology.com/news/?id=11578